So then, let me connect this with the problem of birth and death, which puzzles people enormously
of course. There isn't really anything radically wrong with being sick or with dying. Who said
you're supposed to survive? It’s one of the great wonders of life. What will it be
like to go to sleep and never wake up? Think about that. Children think about that. And
if you think long enough about that, something will happen. You will find out, among other
things. That it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after
having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. We can also look further into
and see that if our death could be indefinitely postponed, we would not actually go on postponing
it indefinitely because after a certain point we would realise that that isn’t the way
in which we wanted to survive. Why else would we have children? Because children arrange
for us to survive in another way by, as it were, passing on a torch so that you don’t
have to carry it all the time. There comes a point where you can give it up. Because
as each new individual approaches life, life is renewed. And one remembers how fascinating
the most ordinary everyday things are to a child, because they see them all as marvellous
because they see them all in a way that is not related to survival and profit. When we
get to thinking of everything in terms of survival and profit value, as we do, then
the shapes of scratches on the floor cease to have magic. And most things, in fact, cease
to have magic. When you die, you're not going to have to put up with everlasting non-existence,
because that's not an experience. A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they're
going to be locked up in a dark room forever, and sort of undergo that. You see, you can't
have an experience of nothing; nature abhors a vacuum. So after you're dead, the only thing
that can happen is the same experience, or the same sort of experience as when you were
born. It is not, therefore, natural for us to wish to prolong life indefinitely. But
we live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die
is a terrible thing. The reason we die is to give us the opportunity to understand what
life’s all about – by letting go, because then we come to a situation that the ego can’t
deal with. When we are no longer hypnotised by that, then our natural consciousnesses
can see clearly what all this universe is for. If any one of us could at this moment
be as one about to die, genuinely and honestly, we would understand the mystery of life.